| “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” |
| —Hebrews 11:1 |
The novel began this way:
He looked across the room and saw her. For the first time in his life, his heart skipped a beat. He got a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Every part of her intrigued him. He could see her talking with her friends. The way the corner of her mouth twinkled when she smiled. That casual way she nervously touched the back of her neck as she talked. He was smitten.
He was at first afraid to approach her. He never really knew what to say to girls. They always seemed to react so negatively to him. But, he was in love. His heart propelled him across the room. He took a leap of faith and spoke to her.
“Hi!” he said. “My name is Jimmy.”
A lot of romance novels begin this way. The glance across the room, the quickening of the pulse, and finally, the protagonist takes the leap of faith. We talk a lot about faith in our normal conversation. Sometimes we interchange the word “faith” with the word “hope.” But faith is the more powerful word. There is an assurance that drives the word “faith” that the word “hope” just doesn’t quite possess.
In our lives as Christian believers, faith plays a very important part in our spiritual formation. The writer of the Book of Hebrews expresses this quite well when he writes in Hebrews 11:1:
Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
Faith has a confidence behind it. It is a confidence in the Christian borne out of the urgings of the indwelling Holy Spirit. The Spirit prompts us to place confidence in what our soul longs to see come to pass. Even though we cannot physically see that for which we earnestly desire, the Holy Spirit gives us calm assurance that what God has promised He will do.
Let’s dedicate ourselves this day to resting fully in the faith we have in the God who loves us with His everlasting love. He has given us an enormously precious investment when He sent His one and only Son, Jesus, to die in our place. God will accomplish in our lives exactly what He has promised. We can count on Him.
Based on a blog originally posted on Wednesday, August 24, 2016
